A New Breed of Night’s Watch Decks

several commonly used plots, such as Trading with the Pentoshi

It sounds like Greyjoy is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here - it's providing location control and stealth. The character control is all neutral.

It seems most of what's coming from Night's Watch is A Meagre Contribution, and Yoren. If you had Greyjoy doing the same thing in say, a Bara kneel or Targ burn deck, would they be significantly weaker?

I enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I've been playing the NW Lion build in its current iteration since around December. I didn't consult with Jeremy, but it may be he saw my build and improved upon it. Having played both decks, my impression is that the banner kraken build is a little slower but plays a better mid and long game. This is in large part due to the fact that the Lanni comes out fast with cheap cards like the Hound but then has to repeatedly pay for it. In contrast, kraken offers more consistent choke with the shipwright that helps take the opponent to the late game, and runs Iron Throne to benefit from it. While the two decks have their strengths, given the variance in the current metagame builds due to a small cardpool (i.e. an early dupe on a key character or an unlucky draw can make a big difference), the build that better plays the long game will have more consistency. To be sure, I'm not saying the kraken deck is slow, but i have found that it tends to put less pressure in the opponent in rounds 1-2, but then gradually increases that pressure better than the lion version.

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Are the Ravens so much better than location-based draw mechanics like Red Keep?

It sounds like Greyjoy is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here - it's providing location control and stealth. The character control is all neutral.

 

It seems most of what's coming from Night's Watch is A Meagre Contribution, and Yoren. If you had Greyjoy doing the same thing in say, a Bara kneel or Targ burn deck, would they be significantly weaker?

Messenger Ravens and Sam are also important to the deck, and Ghost is a boon for those big characters to get them out of the way for easy challenges.

I would argue that the Greyjoy portion is being carried. All they're really doing is making challenges easier to win. They can be replaced by Banner of the Lion and get similar challenge winning capabilities, or Martell possibly for the icon removal etc. The Greyjoy portion is the generic part of the deck.

Yoren is definitely the centerpiece of the deck, with the Greyjoys supporting him. In my opinion, anyway.

I enjoyed the article, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I've been playing the NW Lion build in its current iteration since around December. I didn't consult with Jeremy, but it may be he saw my build and improved upon it. Having played both decks, my impression is that the banner kraken build is a little slower but plays a better mid and long game. This is in large part due to the fact that the Lanni comes out fast with cheap cards like the Hound but then has to repeatedly pay for it. In contrast, kraken offers more consistent choke with the shipwright that helps take the opponent to the late game, and runs Iron Throne to benefit from it. While the two decks have their strengths, given the variance in the current metagame builds due to a small cardpool (i.e. an early dupe on a key character or an unlucky draw can make a big difference), the build that better plays the long game will have more consistency. To be sure, I'm not saying the kraken deck is slow, but i have found that it tends to put less pressure in the opponent in rounds 1-2, but then gradually increases that pressure better than the lion version.

That's pretty accurate I think. 

It all depends on your playstyle, really. I think Banner of the Lion offers an awful lot of strength to the deck. Re-purchasing the Hound can be pretty taxing, but if you get Tyrion out early, it's not as noticeable. And having the gold for Put to the Sword makes it very dangerous for your opponent to ever let a +5 military challenge through.

The Kraken banner is very nice though and a bit more consistent. 

It'll be interesting to see what other banners can fit into this deck to make it even stronger in the future as more cards come out.